


Three Things Clark Will Never Tell Anyone

by Romany



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, spoilers up to S3, vague spoilers for S6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-11
Updated: 2007-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romany/pseuds/Romany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark has issues. Growing up kind of sucks. He keeps it to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Things Clark Will Never Tell Anyone

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as an LJ comment response to bagheera_san's request for my three personal canon/fanon facts about Clark Kent (SV).

I

The hardest thing when he gets back from Metropolis is getting back to normal. He knows *stuff* now. Done *stuff*. There's just all kinds of things you can do without taking your shirt off, you know? He's learned that when he gets these, like, *urges* that people can be talked into doing something about it. That they *want* to. Maybe. Okay, maybe not him but that club-hopping guy. Who is him. And yeah, it was him.

Jacking off in the shower doesn't hold the same appeal.

God, he's sixteen and just wants a blowjob. Is that so wrong?

So he shifts a bit when Lana smiles and talks about maybe being friends. He's the jerkface who broke her heart and so he punches the little voice inside his head that's saying, "Tell her she's pretty. Just move her hand right there." And then there's Chloe, maybe she wants to, maybe she'd go for it. Give her the friends with benefits line, make it all logical until she says okay. Even Lex, when he's sitting on that couch and smiles that little smile of his that says he knows something you don't. "Did you want something, Clark?" he says.

Yeah, he wants something. And he's a nice guy again. He'd ask nice. Say pretty please and be all about the reciprocation because he knows what a power trip that is. He's been on his knees, felt thighs quiver around his hands...

And that's just *wrong*. These are his *friends*. God, he sucks.

 

II

So he and Pete are hanging out doing the DVD double feature while his folks are in town getting dinner and a movie. Guys night in. And it's great until he gets weird and starts talking about, if he had to, could he kill himself. You know, like if his parents were in danger and he had to cease to exist or something.

"Man, that's just morbid," Pete says. "Nobody wants you to *die*. What's wrong with you? Besides, you'd have to blow up or some shit because you'd be all Alien Autopsy."

"We could make a bomb! Just you know, a small green one, something that would hurt only me."

"Okay, Mr. Columbine. Think about the people that love you, who don't *want* you gone. Think about what that would do to them. You know, your mom, your dad, me, Chloe, Lana..."

"You skipped one."

Pete just gives him this look, reaches for his Coke. "Yeah, like Lex is going to be crying over some dead piece of ass."

"Hey!"

"Man, it's true. He's just storing you away like some bottle of wine that he's got to wait a year or two to open. Just wait until graduation, he'll have your present ready for you. He'll have you so mindfucked by then, you'll think it's the best idea ever."

"How many times do I have to tell you? We're just friends. He's not after my...whatever."

And Pete just looks at him like he's six kinds of stupid. "Clark, *everybody's* after your ass. Get a freaking mirror."

Clark gets it. Pete's just joking. "Everybody?"

And then he tackles him, pushes him back on the couch. "You want me, Pete? Say you want me." So he's fake-humping him, like he'd never do with anybody else, oh God no. But he's known him since they were six and they've progressed from the belching and the fart jokes. Okay, maybe not the fart jokes. And he keeps humping him because it's *funny*. "You want me?"

But Pete's not exactly pushing him off. In fact, he starts wiggling like he's kind of happy to see him. And okay, just a little bit embarrassing, but Pete can pop a boner just by looking at a bale of hay too long so Clark doesn't take it personally. But he'd be lying if he said it didn't weird him out.

It's not like Pete has a man-crush on him or anything. Because Clark *does* have a mirror and he's not exactly Brad Pitt. Not one of the guys at the school is going around with, "Dude, I'm totally straight, but that Clark, man, I'd do him. Pretty is pretty, know what I'm saying?"

So maybe this is Pete's Master Plan if he thinks Lex is out to get him. Just offer him something a little closer to home if he wants to check out the other side of the street. Just throw himself on top of that Lex-Sex hand grenade with a "I'm here to save you, Clark!" Which kind of sucks because he's saving him from a fate that doesn't even *exist*.

And Pete's just looking up at him a little breathy and wide-eyed like he wants Clark to kiss him or something. He doesn't think of Pete that way, but wouldn't it be an insult if he didn't? But if Pete's just doing Clark a favor and Clark doesn't really want to...This is just insane.

"Hey, Pete, come on..." he says and totally stops.

And Pete blinks, looks *rejected*. Which lasts for all of two seconds because then he's laughing and saying, "Gotcha! As if."

So Clark pulls back to his side of the couch and Pete goes back to his. Pete picks his Coke back up, tries to drink but ends up snorting some out of his nose because he hasn't stopped laughing. "You...you should have seen your face," he says.

Clark laughs too. "Pete, you seriously *suck*!" he says and throws a handful of popcorn at him.

They don't talk about it after that.

 

III

Clark has a box in the loft where he keeps all his mementos: a few greeting cards, notes from Lana and Chloe, Sharks ticket stubs, the bus ticket from when he went up to see Pete in Wichita that one time. Photographs that he never put into an album. And Lex's letters.

The letters have been shoved to the bottom, rubberband around them. He hasn't so much as looked at them in over a year. He's thought once or twice about just turning the heat-vision on and just burning them. But that's silly because that's what exes do, not friends who it turns out weren't really.

But tonight, he misses his friend. The one who might still exist and maybe he had turned away from too soon.

So he opens up the box and gets them out.

There are more than he remembers, a *stack*. The rubberband only goes around once, and it's one of those jumbo-size ones, and it pinches the envelopes.

He remembers getting the first one, not long after they first met. And when he asked Lex about it, you know, why send a letter when he sees him all the time anyway, Lex just smiled and said, "What's the matter, Clark? I thought every kid liked to get mail." So he didn't ask after that. Except for the time he teased Lex about using linen stationery. And then he got a lecture about the history of flax.

So what could he do but write back? He's sure Lex didn't keep those. They probably got used as tinder for that huge fireplace a long time ago.

He reads, going from one envelope to another. All chronological order. And his head just sinks back into the couch. He stares at the barn beams for a while.

You know, he's not fourteen, fifteen, sixteen anymore. He's twenty. And maybe Lana or Chloe have never written anything like this, but he knows a love letter when he sees it. He's got a whole pile of them sitting in his lap.

_Baby, I want my letters back..._ But Lex would never ask that, that would be admitting that they were important or something. That there was something that desperately needed to be unsaid. Clark's sure that Lex just thinks he did burn them or throw them away. And maybe he really did think that Clark was so clueless that he'd never *get* them.

And it's all so subtle. Lex just writes about his day. Or some book that he's just read. How Clark needs to take up fencing or chess. Sometimes he talks about people he's met, places he's been. But he always writes, _When we go to Europe..._ or _When I introduce you to..._ as if there's never any question that Clark would, like, *be* with him.

_Right now, I'm pretending to take notes during the most pointless Power Point presentation. In fact, we should call it Powerless Point or Power Pointless. If my watch is correct, you should be in English. And I can only smile to think, perhaps, that you're doing the exact thing at precisely this moment--writing to me as I am writing to you..._

But the letters get terser, angrier. Until the second to last one. _Penultimate, Clark. Really, vocabulary isn't solely for your S.A.T's..._ Okay, so penultimate. God, he's got Lex in his *brain*.

_As I sit here, stymied by your overly dramatic exit--and Clark, yes, you are much too dramatic--I find that I have some final words to say to you..._

And that ends with _...I will not write you again._

So who's much too dramatic, Lex?

But Lex lied. Because a few weeks later he received a New Year's card with a simple note.

_I had a dream last week that we were friends again._

Clark puts the stack back together, puts the rubberband back. He places them back inside the box.

So they broke up. Or something. Because Clark doesn't remember it this way. And thinking that Lex had maybe *loved* him at some point doesn't make the split any better. Did he just use the word split? Great, now he's starting to think about this whole mess like that.

And, you know, what Lex did was really risky. His *mom* could have read these. His *dad*. It's not like Lex to leave a paper trail, concrete evidence. So why'd he do it?

Clark wishes he had the answer.


End file.
